After my weed whacker gave up the ghost, I plunged off to find a replacement. I wasn’t unhappy about this because like most guys I enjoy shopping for tools.

I jumped at the chance to visit tool heaven — aka Harbor Freight — just in case you’ve never been.

I knew it was unlikely I’d find a weed whacker there because Harbor Freight isn’t a garden center and only stocks a small inventory of rakes, shovels and hoes. But what guy can pass on the chance to wander aisle after aisle of crescent wrenches, air compressors, portable hydraulic jacks, grinding wheels and a panoply of shiny steel tools of indeterminate utility?

Still, I promised the wife I wouldn’t fall off the face of the earth so I snapped out of my reverie and crossed the street to “The land of the orange apron” where not a syllable of the above dialogue was uttered.

It went more like this:

“Hello?!” “Hello?!!” Then, after the echo trailed off, with hands cupped around my mouth to form a finger megaphone, “Does anybody work here?!”

And apparently nobody does.

At least nobody in the Lawn and Garden Center where the weed whackers live. Welcome to the service economy.

If there’s a lonelier place in the universe than the aisles of a big-box home improvement center, I’ve yet to see it. Ice Station Zebra is Times Square compared to the customer service vacuum in some of these big-box stores.

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I heard a rumor there might be an employee in kitchen and bath but that turned out to be a loud video monitor demonstrating the “so simple anyone can do it” steps to installing a new fog-resistant, corrosion-proof shower door.

Eventually I flushed out a guy with a name badge, “Hal,” in electrical, a member of the employee protection program. He was obviously rattled I had blown his cover and had to be coaxed over to the weed whackers, much like I have to coax the cat to come in at night.

With an actual human being in front of me I unloaded. “If I buy this one,” pointing to the cheapest model, “what kind of weed whacking cord does it take?”

Which stumped Hal. “The guy who knows this stuff called in sick.”

And let’s hope he recovers or the all-knowing, all-seeing keeper of the lawn and garden secrets will take his secrets with him to the grave.

Defeated, I drove to a slightly smaller big-box store with a “This Store Closing” banner flapping from the façade. Once inside I learned why.

Dispirited soon-to-be-former employees shuffled about aimlessly with all the pep of your average grade B horror flick zombie. With the store in full shutdown mode, everything was priced to sell and apparently the first thing to go was customer service.

And can you blame them?

Can you blame any of them? We’ve gotten the employees we deserve by insisting on the lowest possible prices while at the same time demanding the highest possible dividends on our investments.

By valuing price over performance, corporate America has shipped every job possible overseas and cut the remaining workforce to the barest of minimums. Meanwhile, many of those employed in this system have landed in the orange apron out of desperation rather than aspiration.

I’ve always believed if you take a job you owe your employer your best effort, or you should do your best as a matter of personal pride.

But only someone who hasn’t been through years of downsizing, cost cutting and “doing more with less” doesn’t understand how so many workers today feel trapped in a maze without an exit not of their making.

And they sell weed whackers online.

Doug McIntyre’s column appears Sunday & Wednesday. He can be reached at Doug@KABC.com.